More midriff, cleavage and muscle is seen in MTV's popular television docusoaps such as The Real World, Jersey Shore or Laguna Beach than in the average American household. Semi-naked brawny Adonises and even more scantily ...

How did former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg succeed in achieving so much of his "comprehensive and far-reaching" public health agenda? Key strategies included harnessing the full authority of the City health department ...

The Society for Public Health Education (SOPHE) proudly announces the publication of a Health Education & Behavior (HE&B) supplement devoted to the latest research and practice on policy and environmental approaches to fos ...

Sleep apnea, a disorder in which breathing repeatedly stops during sleep, is a potentially serious condition because it deprives the body of oxygen. It becomes an even more serious condition in pregnant women—who ...

What does a 20-ounce bottle of soda cost? If you said 99 cents, you are only partly right. While that may be the price on the sticker at the store, it doesn't take into account the cost to public health. One study, for example, ...

An estimated eight million adults in the U.S. suffer from binge eating disorder. Now, researchers have shown that compulsive binging on foods that are high in fat and sugar can trigger specific molecular changes that can ...

Scientists have recently discovered a link between inflammation and depression, which affects approximately 148 million people in the United States. A new study finds that resveratrol—a natural anti-inflammatory agent found ...

Got milk? If you are overweight and have osteoarthritis, you may want to bone up on your dairy products that have vitamin D. According to a University of Florida study, higher levels of vitamin D may decrease pain and improve ...

New guidelines from the Canadian Task Force on Preventive Health Care to help prevent and manage obesity in children and youth recommend regular growth monitoring at routine health care visits as well as a focus on family ...

Maternal diet during pregnancy and lactation may prime offspring for weight gain and obesity later in life, according to Penn State College of Medicine researchers, who looked at rats whose mothers consumed ...

A new study shows that workplace wellness programs can be effective in helping people lose weight by providing healthier food choices and increasing opportunities for physical activity, particularly if these ...

Obesity is a medical condition in which excess body fat has accumulated to the extent that it may have an adverse effect on health, leading to reduced life expectancy and/or increased health problems. Body mass index (BMI), a measurement which compares weight and height, defines people as overweight (pre-obese) if their BMI is between 25 and 30 kg/m2, and obese when it is greater than 30 kg/m2.

Obesity increases the likelihood of various diseases, particularly heart disease, type 2 diabetes, obstructive sleep apnea, certain types of cancer, and osteoarthritis. Obesity is most commonly caused by a combination of excessive food energy intake, lack of physical activity, and genetic susceptibility, although a few cases are caused primarily by genes, endocrine disorders, medications or psychiatric illness. Evidence to support the view that some obese people eat little yet gain weight due to a slow metabolism is limited; on average obese people have a greater energy expenditure than their thin counterparts due to the energy required to maintain an increased body mass.

Dieting and physical exercise are the mainstays of treatment for obesity. Moreover, it is important to improve diet quality by reducing the consumption of energy-dense foods such as those high in fat and sugars, and by increasing the intake of dietary fiber. To supplement this, or in case of failure, anti-obesity drugs may be taken to reduce appetite or inhibit fat absorption. In severe cases, surgery is performed or an intragastric balloon is placed to reduce stomach volume and/or bowel length, leading to earlier satiation and reduced ability to absorb nutrients from food.

Obesity is a leading preventable cause of death worldwide, with increasing prevalence in adults and children, and authorities view it as one of the most serious public health problems of the 21st century. Obesity is stigmatized in much of the modern world (particularly in the Western world), though it was widely perceived as a symbol of wealth and fertility at other times in history, and still is in some parts of the world.

(MedicalXpress)—Originating in the thymus, the autoimmune regulator (Aire) protein controls a key mechanism that prevents the immune system from attacking the body itself. Individual T cells attack different ...

Australian scientists have discovered a new population of 'memory' immune cells, throwing light on what the body does when it sees a microbe for the second time. This insight, and others like it, will enable ...

Lung diseases like emphysema and pulmonary fibrosis are common among people with malfunctioning telomeres, the "caps" or ends of chromosomes. Now, researchers from Johns Hopkins say they have discovered what ...

Memory and as well as connections between brain cells were restored in mice with a model of Alzheimer's given an experimental cancer drug, Yale School of Medicine researchers reported in the journal Annals of ...

(MedicalXpress)—A team of researchers with the University of Maryland and Mt. Sinai School of Medicine has found that brain regions in female rodents associated with sexual behavior are feminized by repression ...

A team of researchers at the IRCM led by Frédéric Charron, PhD, in collaboration with bioengineers at McGill University, uncovered a new kind of synergy in the development of the nervous system, which explains an important ...